


Absent Friends (And Ones Still Here)

by helsinkibaby



Category: West Wing
Genre: Gen, Minor Character(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-10-16
Updated: 2007-10-16
Packaged: 2018-02-13 11:10:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 992
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2148489
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/helsinkibaby/pseuds/helsinkibaby
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Two Secret Service agents walk into a bar.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Absent Friends (And Ones Still Here)

**Author's Note:**

> For pocky-slash’s West Wing Tertiary Characters ficathon. (It was meant to be Gina, to make me write a story I've been meaning to write for ages. Then I didn't write quite that one, and my other favourite tertiary character, who wasn't on the list, muscled in on the action!)

“So, you wanna hear a joke?”

Gina looks up from her beer, raises one eyebrow at the handsome dark-skinned man sliding onto the bar stool beside hers. “If this is the one about two Secret Service agents walking into a bar…” she begins, stopping when he chuckles, shaking his head.

“Ah, you’ve already heard it.”

“Several times.” She’s giving off her best “Please leave me alone vibe” but he’s evidently not picking up the signals, and since he’s as well trained as she is, she knows it’s completely intentional. Acting completely nonplussed, he simply gives her a dazzling smile, waving to the barman to indicate that he’ll have whatever she’s having, and another for her as well. Sighing, she raises her bottle to her lips, draining the last of its contents, putting it back on the bar with more of a thump that she would have liked. “I didn’t expect to see you here,” she tells him, and he chuckles again.

“Me or anyone else,” he says, and she flinches because it’s the truth. Every other Secret Service agent she knows is drinking in The Hawk and Dove tonight. This bar is far away from there.

This bar is in Rosslyn.

The barman scarcely has time to place the bottle on the bar before she’s raising it to her lips, fighting off a world of memories. “You shouldn’t have come here Wes.” She doesn’t want to see anyone, talk to anyone, just wants to forget. And Wesley Davis, in his Secret Service suit with his military posture is not going to help her do that.

“So I should just let my friend drink herself into a stupor?”

“If that’s what she wants.”

Wesley shakes his head, moves his bottle along the bar, watching the pools of condensation drag and smear. “I can’t do that Gina.” A pause, as if words are on the tip of his tongue and he’s weighing up whether to speak. “He wouldn’t have wanted that.”

Tears sting her eyes, partly because she knows he’s right, partly because she wasn’t prepared to hear him spoken about so casually like that. “I don’t know what…”

He doesn’t let her finish. “We knew, Gina,” he tells her quietly, calmly. “We knew what was going on with the two of you.”

She can’t meet his gaze, sure that his sympathy would be her undoing. “It was nothing,” she tells him, though the words stick in her throat. “Just a fling…”

“It was something,” Wes counters, and there’s nothing she can say to that.

Nothing but remember the last time she was in Rosslyn, the town hall speech, the walk to the motorcade. The bullets and the fear and the rush to the hospital, the hopelessness as she tried frantically to remember any little detail that she could to catch the signal man on the ground.

That night, she felt like she was drowning, but the next day, when she was at Treasury to give her statement, she met someone who understood.

Simon Donovan had shot and killed Ray Beckwith, so if anything, he had a right to feel as out of sorts as she did.

Instead, his countenance was calm, his eyes clear (and bright, and blue, she couldn’t help but notice), his jaw steady.

Five minutes in his company, and she felt better.

Ten minutes in his company and she was already developing a bit of a crush.

An hour in his company, as he was getting ready to leave, he asked her out for dinner, and she hadn’t hesitated to say yes.

They’d both known, of course, that it wasn’t a long term thing, but it had been good – damn good – while it lasted, and when it had ended, they had parted friends, had kept in contact.

Then she’d been shipped off to France with Zoey, and last she’d heard from him, he was going to be guarding CJ Cregg.

When her phone had rung a few mornings earlier, she’d expected it to be her mother, screwing up the time difference yet again. Instead, she’d heard Ron Butterfield’s soft tones, halting and hesitant. “I’m sorry Gina… I know you two were… close…”

She’d booked her flight back within the hour, and today she’d stood in the background, watching as they buried him.

“Yeah,” she says quietly now, shoulders rising and falling in a deep sigh. “It was.” She shakes her head. “You ever wonder why we do this?”

Wesley nods slowly. “Sometimes,” he admits. “Days like today… a little more.”

“Sometimes…” Gina admits, and she’s only just realised it this very second, here with him, “I’m not so sure this is the life I want.”

She thinks he should be shocked, but he’s not. His eyes are calm and steady, staring into hers. “We all feel like that sometimes… but you can’t make that decision now. Not jetlagged and half in the bag… and not after today.”

He’s right. She knows he’s right. That doesn’t make it any easier.

“Why did you come here Wes?” she asks, changing the subject. She can’t think about this any more, her life and her job and Simon. It’s too much; that’s why she came here, to forget. Then he came along and reminded her. She thinks she should hate him for that, but she can’t bring herself to.

He shrugs, gives her a half-smile. “I thought you could do with a friend,” he replies. “And a beer.”

Which is not what he said when he walked in, and she tilts her head curiously. “I thought you didn’t approve of me drinking myself into a stupor?”

“I don’t.”

“So then…”

He holds up his bottle of beer. “To absent friends,” he says, pointing the bottle towards her, and when her throat catches and she can’t speak, she clinks her bottle against his, nods her head. “Drink up,” Wesley tells her quietly, signalling the barman again. “I promise I’ll pick you up off the ground.”

 


End file.
